The Wedding Ring (1970)

This is a fantasy film that should not be missed.Rarely shown on the screens,it's almost forgotten ,even by French fantasy buffs.Christian de Challonges creates an unsettling scary atmosphere without using one single special effect.The animals,omnipresent ,seem to watch the human,and to understand what eludes them.

Sometimes it evokes Roman Polanski's early style,but without the Pole director's favorite camera tricks .This is a movie so rich it can be interpreted in different ways.I will suggest mine:this might be a Garden of Eden parable,and the two heroes would be modern Adam and Eve.A lot of clues are in full agreement with that:"Are the insects watching us?Karina says.I feel someone mighty watch us as if we were insects";the man ,who seems afraid of the woman,the marriage is consummated only at the end of the movie,after the woman has released..the snake;the ending which is completely unexpected and becomes a metaphor of the fall after the original sin.

Challonges describes a world apparently normal,but he introduces unusual elements little by little.The man's clients (he's a vet) are offbeat ,their pets are more and more weird .Besides,Anna Karina's strange beauty enhances the mystery .An impending menace is hanging over the fragile human race.A visitor says:" it wouldn't take much to eliminate the human being on this planet".

This must be a hard-to-find movie,but if you can find it and you like the fantasy genre,this is an unqualified must.We're closer to "twelve monkeys" than "un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide" (I would not recommend the latter).